Former Mayor's Leadership & Judgment Raise Doubts

Denver, CO - Today, Rudy Giuliani comes to Denver to attend a fundraiser at the home of former Denver Nuggets GM Kiki Vandeweghe. The visit to Denver comes as doubts continue to grow about Giuliani's management record and judgment. Among the questions Giuliani has yet to answer are:

Why did Giuliani fire former Police Commissioner, William Bratton, after he received more credit than the former Mayor for reducing crime in New York City?

Why did Giuliani refuse to upgrade the communications equipment for New York City's first responders after the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, which meant that first responders couldn't effectively communicate on 9/11?

Why won't Giuliani release the list of clients for all of his businesses so that the American people can know whom he's been working for over the past few years since leaving office?

Why did Giuliani fail to fully question his friend Bernard Kerik about his alleged ties to suspected mafia-related businesses before putting him in charge of the New York Police Department and later recommending him to head the U.S. Department of Homeland Security?

"The Rudy Giuliani Coloradans don't know has a management record full of flagrant fouls and bad judgment," said Colorado Democratic Party Chair Pat Waak. "From taking unwarranted credit for reduced crime rates, to blindly supporting scandal-plagued friends, to failing to make critical improvements to communications equipment for first responders, Giuliani's lapses in judgment raise a lot of questions. After six years of mismanagement from the Bush Administration, America cannot afford four years of incompetence and cronyism from Rudy Giuliani."

---

Giuliani Booted Famously Successful Police Commissioner. "When Giuliani's famously successful police commissioner, William Bratton, resisted City Hall's tight rein and spoke freely to reporters (often about himself), Giuliani booted him from office. The mayor's press secretary charged, characteristically, that Bratton and his lieutenants, who were decimating crime by historic proportions, were 'out of control.'" [Washington Post, 3/18/07]

Giuliani Refuses To Release His Businesses' Client List. Giuliani steadfastly refuses to release a full list of all his businesses' clients to the American people, despite questions about work they have done for numerous, questionable clients, including CITGO, the oil firm owned by Hugo Chavez's government in Venezuela. [Bloomberg, 3/14/07, Boston Globe, 3/15/07; AP, 1/10/07]

Giuliani Refused To Upgrade First Responders' Communications Equipment. Giuliani continues to receive criticism for his "administration's failure to provide the World Trade Center's first responders with adequate radios, a long-standing complaint from relatives of the firefighters killed when the twin towers collapsed." On 9/11, firefighters "were using the same ineffective radios employed by the first responders to the 1993 terrorist attack on the trade center." [AP, 3/30/07]

Giuliani Admitted He Failed To Fully Investigate Kerik's Background. Giuliani was forced to admit that he made a mistake by recommending his friend Bernard Kerik to head the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. [AP, 3/30/07] Before Giuliani's admission last weekend, it was reported that he was "warned about Kerik's relationship with a company with suspected ties to organized crime even before Giuliani appointed Kerik as New York City police commissioner." [AP, 3/30/07; New York Times, 3/30/07, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/us/politics/30rudy.html]